I Believe in America

"I believe in America." This is the phrase that opens the Godfather movies. It also is the perfect sentiment to describe how many Americans feel in relation to President Trump’s executive order to ban people entering the United States from seven Muslim countries.

I Believe in America was started in Queens in New York City in the weeks after the 2016 presidential election. With a lot of election-related rhetoric surrounding immigrant communities and immigration, and against the backdrop of mass demonstrations of anti-Trump supporters in Manhattan, I Believe in America seeks to interpret sentiment of the people who live in Queens through how they outwardly express their symbolic alignment with American ideologies. Queens is the ideal nexus for this visual study, as it has the unique distinction of being the most ethnically diverse urban area in the world, with over 100 countries represented in its 108 square miles. Approximately 48% of the borough's 2.2 million residents are foreign born.